Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi made a call to Gazan filmmakers to submit segments to comprise a whole feature length film. What viewers see as a result is From Ground Zero, a film that I’m going to politically sympathize with anyway. For this review, I will do my best to be as apolitical as possible here. And instead, I’ll examine the film’s thematic and visual overlaps. Of course, we’re going to see footage and hear sounds of people running away from The American Colony’s constant bombings. The film shows us rubble and tents, but despite similar iconography, there’s some play with cinematographic choices and genre bending. The American Colony’s reign of terror may leave some numb, but Palestinian resilience is here, showing their evolving, open minds.

War is hell, and viewers can see that unfold in the collection’s genre of choice – documentaries where cameras turn inward. Well, maybe not too inward like in Flashback where filmmaker Islam Al Zeriei turns his camera to his daughter, Farah. Docufiction or straight up drama also get some representation here – Mohammad Al Sharif’s No Signal shows a man (Thaer Abu Zubaida) making choices. Another of those docu-fictions or dramas is Tamer Nijim’s Teacher, where a Teacher (Alaa Nijim) has difficulties while getting supplies. I’ll give segments like these the benefit of the doubt of showing the proximity of desert tents and urban hellscapes, no thanks to the colonizers. What stands out for me in this segment as well as all of From Ground Zero is how these characters/subjects can put on brave faces.

Not everyone in From Ground Zero can ‘normalize’ the atrocities happening around them. Sometimes, emotions come to the forefront, and the filmmakers express these emotions without having to show anyone. Aws Al Banna’s Jad and Natalie eventually shows one of its subjects, unable to show the other for obvious reasons. This, thankfully, isn’t just a segment comprising a wide shot of a young man mourning his late girlfriend. A part of this segment is in black and white, one of few that uses colours that purposely historicizes more recent events. Maybe I’m reading too much into black and white, but it reinforces the characters and subjects’ claims to the land.

To paraphrase words already above this one, colonialism tries to remove the indigenous person’s humanity, capabilities to think and feel. From Ground Zero shows some of that while other segments show that colonialism inadvertently sharpens the heart and the mind. Hana Elelwa’s No has, well, let’s call them reenactments of the director turning down a man’s pitches of sad stories. They eventually find a music company where the players sing songs about how ‘It’s certain, the happy days will return’. The segment’s title has certain connotations, obviously they’re negative ones, but saying ‘no’ can be a positive showing of strength. Saying no to certain things means saying yes to others, a lesson that we hope we don’t have to learn.

From Ground Zero, a collection of short documentaries and dramas from Gaza, is an OVID streaming exclusive. For those who don’t know, OVID is a streaming service. And always remember, free Palestine.